Oxford Openings
by Lifebender
Summary: The one-shot start of an epic cross over story entitled, The League of Extraordinary Teenagers. Violet is asked to teach a physics class at Oxford and meets someone from one of my favorite games. Can't label this as a crossover cuz it would give it away.


A/N – This will somehow fit into the larger story later, but needed to be separate.

Oxford Openings

Violet Baudelaire was nervous as she paused outside the classroom door. She had only been at Oxford for three years and one of her professors had asked for her to sub one of his beginning physics classes that day. She had been eager to accept her professor's offer at the time, but now she wasn't so sure.

"Don't be afraid to get creative with the topic" he had said. "Contrary to popular belief, most basic physics concepts are easily demonstrated through physical means."

Violet chuckled a little bit, remembering the joke, and with that confidence, strode through the door.

She swept through the room quickly seeking refuge behind the desk that sat in front of about 150 students. She took a few seconds to compose herself before addressing the class.

"Good morning students, I am Violet Baudelaire. Professor Marley is out of town, so he asked me to step in for him just for today." She paused, wondering what to say next and feeling a little awkward. "I am just over halfway finished with an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering and have taken many different physics classes here already, so hopefully I won't have too much trouble leading your class today."

There was a small ripple of murmurs and sidelong glances from the students probably wondering why Professor Marley didn't just cancel the class like other teachers did when they were away.

"…and on that note… a pop quiz!" Violet said boldly.

Some groans followed this statement, but not many. Violet turned around to the small storage room behind the desk and started bringing out large cardboard boxes.

"You don't need paper or pen for this quiz, however" she continued while opening one of the boxes on her desk. She extracted a wooden contraption and held it up for everyone to see. "To pass, you need to separate these four pieces of wood without breaking or damaging them in any way." She reached into the box again. "The only tool you can use to help you is a bag of sand" she held it up. "There are about 50 of these puzzles, so form groups of three, and send someone to the front to gather materials."

The students quickly set to work and examined the wooden puzzle more closely. Two pieces of wood were crossed and connected by sliding bars to form an 'X'. The other two pieces were directly underneath and connected in the same way as the first two but rotated 45 degrees. The whole thing was connected by a wooden pin, which stuck out of the top and the students quickly deduced that it must have holes in it to allow the passing of the sliding bars. Fitted to the bottom two pieces of wood was a thin layer of rubber to keep the contraption from sliding around when handled.

Violet walked around the room to watch the students work. Some students were trying to level out the connecting bars carefully, so the pin would come out, but whenever they tipped it the other way, the bars from other pieces would lock into place. Other students were using the sand, thinking that pouring it into the holes could block the bars somehow. When she saw this she just shook her head, and was about to make the group stop before they broke the thing when the door to the classroom burst open and in hurried a freshman boy.

"Sorry I'm late Prof…" The boy trailed off realizing that he was speaking to no one. A few students snickered as he blushed and went to his desk.

'_He didn't even look at me'_ Violet thought still hovering next to the group using the sand. _'Oh, of course! In a class this big, I probably blend straight in with all the other students.'_ She was about to go grab an extra device for him to work on when she decided it might be fun to play a little trick on the tardy boy.

She snatched the puzzle from the students just as one of them had filled the crevices to the brim with sand.

"That's enough of that" Violet said quietly and as sternly as she could muster. She gave the wooden contraption a hard shake, and the sand flew out in a cloud of dust. But instead of giving it back to the uncreative bunch, she walked across the length of the room and sat next to the boy. He had his head rested on his arms and looked interested at what his classmates were doing, but was shying away from the groups.

"Hey" Violet addressed him informally and he looked up surprised that a random girl had just approached him. "Professor Marley left to get a soda, but has us working on these puzzles" she said, trying to keep the ploy that she was just another student. "My group is stupid, and I just can't seem to work this out on my own. Care to give me a hand?"

The boy sank down into his desk and blushed at being asked to help by such a pretty girl, but perked up when Violet put the puzzle in front of him.

He turned to face her. "I think I may have seen something like this before" he said, studying it further. "But it was smaller, and I can't quite remember how it was solved." He picked up the contraption by just the pin and tried to twist it, but it wouldn't budge. He even turned it upside down and tried the same thing, but got the same results. When he righted it again, he noticed some sand had trickled out onto the desk, and his eyes widened.

"Hmm" he hummed, and then tapped the rubber base with his forefinger. "Clever…" He looked over at Violet who was watching him closely and stuttered a little. "Uh.. is there any m-more sand?"

"It's in that box" Violet replied pointing. "Let's go get some." She suggested, and grabbed his forearm to lead him to the front of the room. A few students near them had caught on to what she was doing by now, and watched her drag the embarrassed boy to the teacher's desk.

Violet rifled through the box for a full bag of sand and was about to hand it to the boy, but halfway through the exchange she purposefully spilled a pile onto the desk.

"Whoops!" she said, acting like it was an accident. "Let me just clean—"

"Wait! That's perfect actually" interrupted the boy. "I'm sure Professor Marley won't mind if we borrow his desk for a bit." He began to spread the sand out into a thin layer.

While his back was turned toward the class, Violet raised her hand to try to get the student's attention. About half of them stopped what they were doing to look at her, while the other's followed suit after hearing that the room had gotten quieter.

In the meantime, the boy had placed the puzzle onto his layer of sand and started talking aloud, giving his full attention to solving the thing.

"And now that the sand is down, I should be able to spin it on the desk—" he gave it a sharp spin and the rubber bottom didn't catch on the desk because of the sand. "That should release the bottom bar locks, then I bet the top will spin freely in the opposite direction…" he stopped the top two pieces of wood while the bottom was still spinning and gave it a flick the other way. "…and then the pin should come right out!" He plucked the pin from the puzzle mid-spin and there was a gasp from the class as the four wood pieces disconnected and slid away from each other.

"Very good" commended Violet as the boy looked up to see the entire class staring at him. Violet went to the board and started writing down some terms. "Now the main concept to this solution that you will be studying is called centrifugal force, which comes from the two Latin words _centrum_, meaning 'center',and _fugere_, meaning 'to flee'."

Violet turned back to the boy she left in the front of the room. He was gaping at her, his eyes wide and mouth open.

"Congratulations on solving the puzzle, you pass" She said simply. "But if you had been here since the beginning of class, you would have known that Professor Marley was out of town, and I'm subbing today."

The boy blinked a couple times baffled at the situation and then started turning really red.

Violet noticed the boy's predicament and said, "We can talk after class I suppose, right now, why don't you take a seat for the lecture?"

"Uh… right" the boy replied hurriedly and turned back toward his desk, but tripped up on the steps and fell down. More than half the class snickered while he popped back up and slid into his desk humiliated.

Violet continued her lesson explaining the other forces involved in the puzzle's solution, mainly friction and torque. She showed the class how the sand reduced the friction created between the rubber and desk and allowed it to spin when torque was applied by the hand. The whole lecture went pretty smoothly and she ended up letting everyone go twenty minutes early.

Violet caught the boy who had solved the puzzle before he could shuffle out the door with the rest of the crowd and pulled him aside.

"Look, I'm sorry I tricked you" she started. "I honestly didn't know you would be able to crack the puzzle so easily. That was expertly solved."

"I'm sort of a puzzle wiz…" the boy replied looking down away from her eyes. "It's usually easy for me to figure out how things work." He pulled his head back up. "I'm sorry for being late, I should probably go…" he hustled out the door.

'_3…2…1…_' Violet counted down in her head, and just as she suspected they boy rushed back in the classroom.

"Forgot my bag…" he mumbled, his cheeks red once again.

"Hey, I never caught your name" Violet said as the boy turned for the door once again.

He looked at her over his shoulder before exiting and replied, "Luke Triton" and hurried out of the classroom.


End file.
